Arts Festival organisers to discuss formal apology for opening MC

The director of the Festival of Pacific Arts in Solomon Islands says organisers plan to make a formal apology for the behaviour of the opening ceremony’s MC last night.

Robert Au says Johnson Honimae, the media spokesperson for the Pacific islands Forum Secretariat, caused widespread offence in a speech to delegates in Honiara by singling out certain countries.

Comments on the festival’s facebook page accuse Mr Honimae of being drunk but Mr Au says he is a committed Christian and his behaviour would have been worse had that been the case.

Mr Au says the incident has put a bit of a dampener on the event.

“But we’ll see how we can get a more amicable way of apologising to member countries who were, maybe they were mentioned, something like that, and we’ll do it as part of cultural connections with these countries.”

Robert Au says he will be speaking to Mr Honimae about the matter today but otherwise the festival has started well.